My new blog look has gotten a lot of positive comments. It's easier on the eye and it certainly has drawn more readers from Blog Explosion.

Yeah, right. Maybe a half-second they were there, then kept on surfin'. LOL

I've decided not to play the Blog Challenge any more. When I had my old blog, I never won. No one wold stick around long enough to actually read the blog, they just barely look at it and then vote on whichever one looks the nicest. Since I had the makeover, I've won twice. They like what they see, I guess. Hopefully someone will come back later and actually read my blog. Hmmm. I'll just have to work harder to make it readable.

Last night, I did submitted my re-writes for my writing forum. So far, I have had good critiques of my short story, Maui Madness, and my poem, The Cliffs. We'll see how the re-write improved them in the next week. I still have to give my critiques later on today.

Here's the opening hook of the story:


Maui Madness

"Holy moly...Jeeeeeez!" was the first thing that came out of Sandy’s open mouth as her rented bike took the first curve in the series of switchbacks at what seemed to be about one-hundred miles an hour.

The brochure from the hotel that her boyfriend, Joe, had shown her had said it was to be a half-day ride down Mount Haleakala and ending in the beautiful, coastal town of Paia. No biggie. It was nothing like the bungee-jumping, cliff-climbing, hang-gliding vacations that he usually preferred.

The name of the company had even sounded safe; Aloha Bike Tours. It had lulled her into thinking that it would be a nice little ride, see some scenery, you know…relaxing, outdoorsy stuff, see some birdies then go back to the beach. But no, it had to be a non-stop, coasting-down-the-side-of-a-volcano-on-a-road-with-no-guardrails kind of excursion with a lean, browned, Hawaiian guide who was riding backwards, of all things. Backwards!

OK, if you liked that, be on the lookout for it to appear on a publication in the near future (crossing fingers)


Let's see. Oh, (insert plug here) if you haven't subscribed to All Things Southern, you really should. My weekly newsletter came today and had a really nice recipe for "Shellie's New Potato Bites". They sound yummy and I'll have to try 'em!

Here is an excerpt:

~~Chuckles~~
"Carole Hits the Jackpot"

I feel sorry for my Uncle Sonny. He's recently gotten married for the third time and he really wants this one to work but I talkedto him yesterday and, yep, there is trouble in paradise already. Uncle Sonny's never been much of a gambler but his new wife loves the slots, so the two of them have been enjoying one evening a week at a nearby casino.

"Things were fine at first," Uncle Sonny said. "We'd eat supper, set a limit and play a while until the coins ran out. Then I found out that Carole wasn't sticking to her end. Whenever she caught me not looking, she was cashing an extra check. To settle things without asking her to give up the casino entirely, we agreed that in the future we'd always play the machines together.

"How's that working?" I asked.

"Fine, I thought, but last night I had to face the facts. Carole has a problem."

"What happened last night?"

"Well, we were there sort of late so we decided to stay at one of the hotels. I woke up in the middle of the night and Carole wasn't in the room. I started down the hall. I admit, I was kind of panicking when I ran up on her at one of the vending machines. She was stuffing coins in like there was no tomorrow and piling up chips, sweets and candyin her purse.

'That is strange," I offered. "But everyone gets food cravings."

"That's not the problem. It's the way she snapped at me when I asked her to come back to bed that bothered me."

I was almost afraid to ask. "I'm sorry, what'd she say?"

"She said, 'In a minute, Sonny! Can't you see I'm winning?'"

~Shellie

She has more where that came from, so go on over to her website and sign up for her weekly newsletter. She is one funny lady and a very spiritual one as well.

That's it for now, folks. Gotta go clean my kitchen. Ya'll come back, ya heya!